We write this article every year, and every year, thanks to the ever-changing SEO landscape, we have to re-prioritize what a company with a limited budget should do to become as effective as possible online.

Instead of hiring a search marketing firm to do a few full blown services, consider doing as much work as possible in house while using an SEO expert hourly on a consulting basis.

What a company should do with its website often depends on how the website is designed. Luckily, businesses on limited budgets typically have simple websites designed as .htm, .html, .asp, or .cfm. These are the tactics we would recommend for those sites.

If a site is designed in all flash or if every page except the home page has a long url string as in: http://www.mywebsite.com/get_mfg_list.cfm/rc/nav?Index4&Etc./?TooLong=8
These tactics may be less effective for the website, which is probably not being indexed well by spidering engines online.

1) Key Phrase Research – Cost $0 - $25
This is always the number one priority. Hiring a firm to do this could blow a $2K budget and give more phrase and market research then a small company needs. We recommend doing in house phrase research one of three ways:

A) The Overture Search Tool -- http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Type in relevant phrases and then cut and paste those phrases and their variations into a spreadsheet that includes their search numbers. Then type those phrases in “quotes” in Google. The total number of website pages indexed for that phrase appears on the upper right hand side: “Results 1-10 of about 43,000 for ‘phrase.’” Place the total number of indexed websites as revealed by Google in the spreadsheet.

B) Wordtracker -- http://www.wordtracker.com
Many SEO firms use this tool which does what is mentioned above in a quicker and more thorough way. This method is a bit more advanced, but a beginner can handle it, especially if they read Wordtracker directions/tutorials. Order the free trial and then the tool for a week: $25.60.

C) Keyword Discovery -- http://www.keyworddiscovery.com
I just had the pleasure of reviewing this service and it does a great job of showing what keywords are "really" being searched in various search engines (and even on eBay, etc). The basic service is powerful enough for the average webmaster. Check out Keyword Discovery...

Look over either spreadsheet and choose 1-5 phrases for the website. When choosing phrases, look for highly searched phrases with a low number of competing sites. The lower the number of competing sites, the better a website will do for the phrase. As a rule of thumb on small sites, don’t shoot for phrases with more than 40,000 competitors.

Want more than 5 phrases? Choose more only if the site has more than 20 content rich pages. Pages with url strings like the long one mentioned above don’t count as content pages (many shopping carts are structured this way and can be invisible to engines). Pages that only have graphics or forms on them also don’t count.

2) Create/Optimize Meta Tags for Content Pages -- Cost $0 – Potential Consulting Hours
It might be valuable to have a SEO consultant look over the plan for tag placement and the tags. Otherwise, you can learn a lot by reading articles on Meta tag optimization and following these general guidelines:
• Tags consist of:
<title>Insert Title </title>
<meta NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT=" Insert Desc ">
<meta NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT=" Insert Phrases ">
• Make each tag unique to the page it represents.
• Place each tag at the front of the page code.
• Use one of the chosen phrases in the title and description.
• If using 5 phrases prioritize them and use the #1 priority phrase on the index page.
• Distribute the other phrases to pages/tags, keeping in mind the more tags centering on one phrase, the more likely a search engine will categorize the site as being “about” that phrase.
• Content on the page should correspond in some way to the phrase used in that page’s Meta tags. Don’t put a totally unrelated phrase in a page’s Meta tags.

3) Establish Link Popularity -- Cost $500 - $1000 Buying Links, Potential Consulting Hours
Use the Google toolbar to check out the website’s Page Rank number. This is not a number to “live and die” by, but gives a sense of how many links come into a website. For an exact count of incoming links, go to Google and type in: www.companysite.com -site:www.companysite.com.

To see how many incoming links (or what Page Rank) sites on the first page results for desired key phrases have, use either of these methods. This gives a goal for a link campaign.

If your website has 0 Page Rank or the above-mentioned Google check on links yields no results (and the website is not brand new online) hire a SEO firm for consulting on link popularity. They should be able to diagnose the problem in one hour. Hours needed for resolving the issue depend on what is wrong. But the problem needs to be resolved.

If Page Rank and link numbers are just low, increase relevant incoming links by:
• Buying links in relevant directories (Yahoo, Business.com, Industry Portals, Association Websites)
• Request reciprocal links from clients, partners, and other people in your industry. A company can request link exchanges from strangers, but will probably not get an agreed swap from anyone, let alone anyone that has a higher PR.
• For ideas on where to buy or request links, use that Google method www.companysite.com -site:www.companysite.com to find out who is linking to competing sites and request or buy links from those websites.

4) Server Log Setup -- Cost $0 - $1000, Potential Consulting Hours
There is no point in proceeding with any search marketing if a company does not have an easy way to analyze traffic behavior and conversions. Chances are the web designer set the site up with a server log analyzer, but it might not be a comprehensive solution. If it is, take the time to look at it. If not, get off-the-shelf software (that resides either on or off of the website’s server) to generate reports that can be easily read and analyzed monthly. We are fans of Net Tracker (www.sane.com), Engine Ready, (www.engineready.com), and Click Tracks (www.clicktracks.com).

For help getting this setup, hire an SEO consultant or use the site’s designer or hosting company.

5) Web Position Gold -- Cost $149.00
Finally, be sure to check search engine position growth (or slippage). Web Position is a good industry standard tool for tracking positions. We don’t recommend using their optimization tools without a grain of salt under your tongue, but the reporting tool is great.



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